


Sibilance

by IvyPane



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drabble, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, I think?, M/M, Nightmares, Oneshot, Poetic, Post-Cas returning to bunker, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 00:22:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IvyPane/pseuds/IvyPane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has always had nightmares, and although they get better once Castiel returns to the bunker, they still persist. Castiel can tell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sibilance

The nightmares he had were oozing black and liquid red, cancerous tumours, residing in cells of his brain that refused to flake away into refuse. They’d gotten worse and better and better and worse, tides stemmed by friends that became family and by family that were always family and by strangers from the streets. He’d gotten used and unused to them, was misused by them and misused them, letting out his anger within them, slaughtering and being slaughtered, harming and being harmed, breaking and being broken. 

Lately, they’d somehow gotten worse.

He’d see his half-recovered brother sink into heavy sleep each evening and seemingly he’d manage to sigh his relieved sigh and close his own eyes and then watch his brother die all night behind his eyelids, his body betraying his fears. Then he’d embrace a rare quiet and he’d wake halfway through it, catching a shadow with his lips and a ghost of wind with his fingertips, yearning for something that isn't there. And those nights were worse than the nightmares, because the nightmare would morph with real life so solidly he’d seem to have been deposited back into Hell itself, listless and hopeless and lonely and waiting, except this time he knew exactly what and who he was waiting for, just as surely as he knew that they would never, could never come. 

On a night like that, Castiel returned to them, and at last Dean slept with no memories or visions for a whole night, worn out after being strung tight and set loose and quivering, shivering, quiet with the opened floodgates of sadness and satiated hunger and choking relief. 

The nightmares returned the next night, sneaking in with the familiar treads of best friends as Castiel stayed silent and far, distant and hurt, barely uttering a fraction of a word either to Dean or Sam’s silhouette. He barely ate, he never slept. 

Dean worried his lips until he could take it no more; with furrowed brow, he tried to reach the man who could once hear his darkest, most desperate prayers even if his lips were locked and speechless, but their Cas, his Cas, refused to be reached. You have instead reached the answering machine of “I-don’t-understand-why-do-you-want-me-to-say-my-name”, please leave a message after the tone. This is a recording. Your Cas won’t be home for a long while yet, even if you thought he’d been home for days. 

The nightmares grinned, terrible, grim, and dug into his soft, flesh-stripped, fleshy heart with talons attached to the bodies that carried wings Castiel had lost for him, because of him, ultimately, obviously, as always. His pulse thudded tightly and his veins broke free of their muscles and bones and slithered around inside him like snakes and he screamed the most silent of screams heard in dreams. 

Castiel heard that scream with the shells of his ears. 

Dean awoke to a face blurred with tears from his eyes and even once the tears cleared he could see that his Cas was still blurred at the edges, but reclaiming those edges as fast as he’d lost them. He breathed in as deeply as his stunted, scared lungs would allow and he said Castiel’s name as if he were praying again, but not praying for himself or for Sam or for the world but praying for a sign Castiel was still among the living. Castiel was, how sweetly he was; breathing and staring and still. 

He was sharp again now, but still soft; he was Cas again, now. Dean didn’t remember the dream but he remembered the reality they were living and he let Castiel take his hand and cradle it in his own as if it were a crumbling flower, worn rough by the wandering wind. Cas’s voice was the lament of a storm and the kiss of thunder and Dean listened as if each sound was a drop of rain and he was a man dead of thirst already, yearning only for water to wash his bone-dry bones clean. 

“Dean, what did you dream?” Castiel’s eyes were water too; pools fit to drown in, fit to sink in and never rise for a single gasp of air again, and Dean sank like a stone, silently. Not a bubble rose from his lips. “Dean?” whispered waterfalls and whirlpools and waves. “What did you dream?” 

I dreamt I never had you and I dreamt I had and lost you and I dreamt that you had left me or, worse still, that I had left you. I dreamt you didn’t want me and I dreamt I didn’t want you, but all this time I dare to hope we both wanted each other, tenderly and quietly and soullessly, selfishly. I dreamt that I needed you and you left me and I dreamt that you needed me and I never knew. I dreamt every terrible second of our lives, every darkness and every particle of dust that covered words unsaid and actions undone. I dreamt of us as we are now; so close and yet so separate. I dreamt all that we lived through, Cas. I dreamt our last dreams had soured to nightmares, as so much of our lives have. I dreamt we would never take a step closer. I dreamt I’d lose you. Again. And I dreamt that this loss would be the last. 

“I dreamt unspeakable things, Cas. Stupid, unspeakable things.” 

“The unspeakable must not be spoken.” Shimmering, shining and so, so close.

“Cas…” 

“Stay silent. Sleep.” 

Thus Cas said, and thus Cas sat, and Dean studied his face in the gloom as if it were a symphony painted on sighs until sleep took him in its arms.


End file.
